Time / Image

This is a fascinating collection of films from the British Council archives, which have been digitised and made available on-line for the first time. Starting from the 1930s, they are beautifully shot, and include themes such as cricket and the history of the English language.

This is just an example , London in1942, in the middle of the Second World War:

London 1942 (1943) from British Council Film Archive on Vimeo.

TIME/IMAGE engages the public in the past, the present and the future by inviting them to explore and discuss the films of the British Council. A number of films are already available to watch through our Vimeo or YouTube channels.

From the early nineteen thirties, for a period of about twenty years, the British Council was an enthusiastic commissioner and distributor of documentaries, designed to showcase Britain to the outside world at a time when fascism was becoming evermore prevalent across Europe. Made by some of the finest filmmakers of the time - such as cinematographer Jack Cardiff (of Powell and Pressburger fame) and director Ken Annakin (Battle of the Bulge) - these films are today held in the BFI archives, almost entirely unused.

The aim of TIME/IMAGE is to catalogue and digitise as many films as possible, and to provide the general public ACCESS to this valuable resource through the TIME/IMAGE website. We want to invite the public to EXPLORE these films and to actively ENGAGE with them through the collection oral histories and artistic responses. In so doing, we want to encourage social debate geared towards how we perceive the present – and hopefully the future – through the interpretation of our own historical narratives.

Working closely with Counterpoint, the British Council and the BFI, the TIME/IMAGE project will contribute to the digitisation and narrativisation of the UK’s cultural heritage; a flagship of New Deal of the Mind’s Digital Domesday.